$10 to help stop Congress from passing H-1B Increase

$10 to help stop Congress from passing H-1B Increase

Date: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 1:05 AM




JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

November 16, 2005 No. 1368


As you know, the Senate voted to increase the number of H-1B visas by 30,000. This is on top of the 20,000 additional visas approved last year. That's just the tip of the iceberg though because the Senate approved over 350,000 work visas.

The next battle to stop this increase will be in the House. NumbersUSA needs our help to stop the House from approving the increase. If Congress approves this increase Bush is sure to sign it. The House is the next battle and there is enough resistance to this visa increase that we may be able to tip the balance.

I rarely ask people to donate anywhere but ZaZona.com because I have severe budget problems that I constantly struggle with. I make an exception here because NumbersUSA is about all we have to help us fight this attack on our economic well being.

I'll leave all of you that have jobs with a thought - $10 means nothing to you right now, but if one of these foreign workers replaces you, then you won't be able to help anyone to get your job back. Losing your job will cost a lot more than $10. Why not help NumbersUSA while you are still able to?

Many people on my mailing list are unemployed. I'm not asking you to make a donation unless you can afford it.

HINT: I hope all of you read to the bottom of my newsletters where I ask for donations. Organizations like ZaZona.com and NumbersUSA don't have a pot of gold to operate on like the Chamber of Commerce or the ITAA. We work on shoe-string budgets and will only survive with your help.

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Date: Wednesday Noon EST


Please give $10 to help stop Congress from passing a massive immigration increase


Click here to make a donation.
http://www.numbersusa.com/donation.html

Last week's lopsided Senate vote in favor of a massive increase in overall immigration revealed something ugly: The power of almost unlimited corporate money in support of immigration to cause government-forced U.S. population growth, congestion, depressed wages and increased demand for social services.

We believe we can stop the Senate's increase this fall. Thanks for all the faxing and phoning you have already done in this battle.

NumbersUSA's Capitol Hill Team of professionals and its Internet Grassroots Mobilization System are prepared to do everything possible in the House of Representatives to beat back the Senate's recklessness. But NumbersUSA's faxing system -- the most sophisticated and largest used of all immigration-reform tools -- relies 100% on donations from citizen users to stay in business.

For specific instructions for easily donating online, by mail, by PayPal and even by giving a car, go to the bottom of this email.

If you've never contributed to the maintenance of the NumbersUSA citizen-to-Congress faxing system, I hope you will make this the first time.

The American people can beat the open-borders lobbies. But it will take all the strength of all the grassroots immigration-reduction groups to win the day.

We don't need to match the money of the corporate and ethnic open-borders lobbies. In fact, we don't need even one-tenth of their money. But to leverage the will of the American majority, it is clear that we must at the minimum maintain the NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team and Internet Grassroots Mobilization System and to continue to grow our influence.

GETTING THIS A SECOND TIME?

I've attended churches like this, have you? They pass the offering plates early in the service. But when they count the money during the sermon, they find it isn't enough to meet urgent needs. So, at the end of the service, they pass the offering plates a SECOND TIME.

Well, this is our version. Every month we email all of you an opportunity to help pay for the faxing system and other NumbersUSA activist tools. But the one I sent in late October not only brought far less response than we usually get, but the recent donations were not nearly enough to pay for a month of running the fax system.

We think something blocked the message from reaching most of you. So, we are sending a second request and ask that you forgive us if you got the first one.

Lots of ways for you to easily make that first-time donation

To donate by credit card on-line click here.

Or send a check to:
NumbersUSA
1601 North Kent Street
Suite 1100
Arlington, Virginia 22209

For more information on mailing a donation, click here.

To donate by PayPal click here.

To Donate a Vehicle click here.

Thanks for any donation you can make this month,

--ROY BECK

P.S. NumbersUSA's financial management meets all the criteria of the IRS as a non-partisan, non-profit organization. Handling of donations is overseen and held accountable by a Board of independent directors and by independent Auditors.

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NOTE FROM ROB: Some links aren't provided because I converted an HTML newsletter from Roy Beck to basic text. You can get all of the information from the website at:
http://www.numbersusa.com/

Date: Thursday 3NOV05 11:45 p.m. EST


Dark day for American workers ... Now we know how big our task is to truly reform immigration

We got rolled in the Senate today -- Saddle back up and fight another day

The Byrd Amendment lost 14-85. It would have stripped a giant budget bill of provisions to increase importation of permanent foreign workers and family by 350,000 a year.

Please, let's get back on our horses and ride right back into battle Friday. Some of the most important phone calls you can make and faxes you can send will be those you do Friday.

We've still got a good shot at keeping the immigration increases from passing into law.


1. The 14 Heroes who Stood with Us and the American Worker Today


With the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and every other major corporate lobby holding a campaign-funding gun to the heads of 100 U.S. Senators, only 14 Senators took the risk to stand beside and for American workers.

DEMOCRATS WHO VOTED AGAINST GIVING U.S. JOBS PERMANENTLY TO AN EXTRA 350,000 FOREIGN WORKERS A YEAR
Akaka of Hawaii
Byrd of West Virginia
Dayton of Minnesota
Dodd of Connecticut
Dorgan of North Dakota
Durbin of Illinois
Feingold of Wisconsin
Landrieu of Louisiana
Rockefeller of West Virginia
Stabenow of Michigan

INDEPENDENTS WHO VOTED AGAINST GIVING U.S. JOBS PERMANENTLY TO AN ADDITIONAL 350,000 FOREIGN WORKERS A YEAR
Jeffords of Vermont

REPUBLICANS WHO VOTED AGAINST GIVING U.S. JOBS PERMANENTLY TO AN ADDITIONAL 350,000 FOREIGN WORKERS A YEAR
Inhofe of Oklahoma
Sessions of Alabama
Vitter of Louisiana

Study this list carefully. You probably have never seen this grouping or anything like it in the past.

Frankly, we're quite surprised by some of the names on the list. But let's be sure that they all get lots of positive reinforcement.


2. Send "thank you" and "how dare you" faxes


We are in the process of putting up faxes that match six or seven groupings of Senators based on who they are and how they voted.

Please go to your Action Buffet corkboard to see if those faxes have been posted for you to send:
www.numbersusa.com/actionbuffet

If you don't see what you are looking for, be sure to click on the ALL MY ACTIONS link on the yellow scap paper in the upper right corner of our corkboard.

Take at least one action Friday to let your Senators know that you noticed how they voted and let them know what you think of it.

Senators are somewhat used to being hammered before a vote (although not usually as hard as you have hammered them this past week). But Senators are really used to getting a vote over with and hearing sudden silence from all the citizens who were clamoring up to that moment.

The message Senate staffers hear Friday can be quite influential on the next immigration decision their offices make.


3. Make a quick phone call to comment on your Senators' votes


I know that many of you are tired from phoning this week. But most of you haven't phoned at all. This would be a great time to call.

Say you are calling about "the Senator's vote yesterday on the Byrd amendment to the Budget Reconciliation bill" and how pleased or outraged you are by how the Senator voted.

Sen. Corzine (D-NJ) did not vote.

So, every Senator not listed among the heroes above deserves strong words from you about their vote against the Byrd amendment.

There are some people on this heroes list whom you have never been able to thank before for an immigration action. So, take this opportunity and try not to be too backhanded in your praise. Having some of these people vote with us for a change might reduce their resistance for the future.


4. What's next?


The U.S. House is preparing to approve its version of the big Budget Reconciliation bill. It does not have any of the immigration increases that the Senate passed.

And the House would raise money with higher visa fees, just like the Byrd Amendment would have.

We have been working regularly and intensely with several House leaders ever since the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the 350,000-a-year increase in imigration.

Several of our allies in the House have been using various means to make clear to the House leadership that they would not be able to vote for a budget bill that included immigration increases.

After the House passes its bill, leaders from House and Senate will meet in a conference committe to iron out differences between the two bills.

It is imperative that House leaders understand that if they allow any immigration increases to stay in the final joint bill that so many immigration-reductionists in the House will vote against the bill that it will die. Our allies have the ability to kill the bill because so many other Members of Congress plan to vote against the bill for other reasons.

Our ability to win will be enhanced if a growing number of Senators who voted against us and the Byrd Amendment today will privately tell their leaders that the giant immigration increase is not so important to them to kill the entire bill. Your faxes and phone calls can make a real difference.


5. Why did we lose so badly?


Since 1996, the Senate has been a vast wasteland when it comes to concern about immigration competition undermining American workers and overtaxing our communities' infrastructures.

All good immigration work has come out of the House of Representatives. While the House has gotten better and better each year for the last five years, the Senate has remained profoundly open borders oriented.

We knew we had our work cut out for us in the Senate. I don't think we knew it was quite as bad as the vote seemed to reveal today.

Nonetheless, it is good to start having some roll call votes so we can find out what side these Senators truly are on. It is also helpful to know that several factors contributed to such a lousy showing for our side. Here are some of them:

A. Petty partisanship. A lot more Republicans might have considered voting the way their constituents were pushing them but their partisanship is so strong that they couldn't bring themselves to vote for something advanced by Sen. Byrd, the Senate's senior Democrat. So, these Republicans were willing to sacrifice the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Americans rather than link up with a Democrat!

B. Feeling of obligation to an earlier compromise. Some of the Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who expressed serious reservations about the big expansion in immigration had fought to reduce the H-1B visa increase from 60,000 a year to 30,000. Because they won that fight, they claimed they felt obligated to support the bill that came out of their committee.

This appears to be the case for Sen. Feinstein (D-CA), Sen. Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Grassley (R-IA), for example. They need to learn that that kind of loyalty is misplaced. So what if they reduced 30,000 of the damage if they ignored the other 350,000 increase.

Fortunately, three Members of the Judiciary felt primary loyalty to victimized American workers. Sessions, Feingold and Inhofe voted against their Committee's handiwork and for the Byrd Amendment. They earned special thanks from all of us.

C. Corporate campaign money. Senators are far more beholden to corporate campaign contributions than are most House Members.

That is because it is difficult for most Senators to raise enough money without major bundlings of corporate money. This is almost as true for Democrats as for Republicans. When the Chamber of Commerce and Microsoft say an action is non-negotiable, that action usually happens.

Surprisingly, the AFL-CIO which was on our side today wasn't able to move many Democrats. That shows what a powerful hold corporate money has on Democrats but also how many Democrats are willing to let immigration harm American workers because they expect most new immigrants to vote Democratic.

D. The mystique of Bill Gates and Microsoft. Senators regard Microsoft as a kind of mystical golden goose. If Microsoft says it needs a lot more foreign workers, otherwise rationale Senators turn off their curiosity and do whatever they can to accommodate Gates, ignoring all the government and other studies showing that there is no conclusive evidence of any kind of shortage of American tech workers.

Is there any hope? You bet there is. And it starts with all of the calls and faxes you are going to deliver to those Senators today.

What choice do we have? Are we just going to give up our country?


6. Why we keep fighting


We know people who have been victimized by the Senate's past disastrous immigration decisions. We are victimized ourselves.

Larry of Atlanta has already fired off a note to his Sen. Chambliss. He copied it to me. Here's a part of it:

"I wish I could put into words that you could understand, how disappointed myself and many of my co-workers are with your actions to support this raping of the American High-Tech Worker.

"I think along with (the immigration increases that you spoke for on the floor), there should be a process in place to notify every American-born college student who is studying for a High-Tech field that they may as well change their degree program for one in which an American still has a fighting chance to work in it. That is, if there are any of those fields left.

"Up until now, I have been a staunch Chambliss supporter. I cannot in good concience continue to support someone who is willing to give my job away to a foreign worker. I am sorry, but this has become a personal issue for me as I am one of those "Displaced High-Tech Workers" born and raised here in the United States that has been forced to change my career direction after watching my profession be virtually taken over by foreign workers. I honestly feel that you are now part of the problem and not part of the solution. You are selling the United States to foreign interests."

Larry asked me if he had spoken too passionately. I said:

"Nope, not over the top at all. Powerfully stated. He is going to have to hear this kind of thing over and over again over the next few months. But if he does, I think he can begin to change his colors. Ibve seen it happen before. I've seen it happen before.

Dr. Perl wrote after contacting his Texas Sen. Cornyn, another one who spoke on the floor yesterday about our high need for more foreign workers -- and about how Americans aren't skilled enough to do the technical jobs of this country. Dr. Perl said:

"I have made several calls to Sen.. Cornyn on this issue and sent all the faxes, from the time the Specter/Kennedy amendment came before the Judiciary Committee and subsequently to the Byrd's Amendment. As you say, he is clearly not listening. I voted for him in the last election, but this is one vote he would not get again. I hope there are enough Texans like me to make sure he does not get elected again."

Whatever your feelings about your Senators' votes today -- and however raw (but still polite) -- those Senators need to hear from you so they can't ignore what they are doing to the American people and our American society.

We got hundreds of feedback response today about what you heard when you called Congress. I hope many more of you will follow in the steps of all the ones who were calling Congress for the first time.

We got a lot of responses like this one:

"We both called our Senators Warner and Allen (R-VA) yesterday. It was really easy, and we urge all Americans to call their Senators and Representatives when there is an important issue coming up for a vote. These elected officials
need to know how the taxpayers and voters stand on issues that will effect their lives."
................Tommie and Dawson

All of your phone calls, faxes and time this last week really DID accomplish something -- even if they didn't move many votes.

It is disappointing that your outpouring of opposition to the 350,000 increase did not move more votes our way today.

But don't think for a moment that your efforts were wasted. There would not even have been a vote if not for all of your pressure.

And you cannot know how many Senators -- because of your pressure -- had to sweat the tension between what their constituents want and what their corporate contributors wanted.

Keep the pressure up and someday -- as happened in the House -- you should see some big steps forward.

Thanks for all you work and attention.

-- ROY


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